A Matter of Control
by BloodRaevynn
Summary: What options do Cloud have when the Lifestream can neither absorb Sephiroth, nor hold him for any length of time? Eventual Cloud x Sephiroth x Cloud.
1. Prologue

Disclaimer:

Final Fantasy VII belongs to Square-Enix; if it belonged to me...well... you can probably imagine what the result of that would be.

Notes:

This fic is post-game and ignores AC and DC, and will probably ignore most, if not all, of CC as well. The first few chapters will have no dialogue, and dialogue will remain minimal throughout, because that was a restriction I posed when I began writing it, to help me develop my descriptive abilities.

Will be Yaoi of the Cloud x Sephiroth (and vis versa) variety, with hints of Cid x Vincent (and/or vis versa).

* * *

**A Matter of Control**

Prologue

* * *

The smell of decay pervaded the room – a vaguely nauseating stink of dust, mold, and rotting wood. His eyes opened slowly, lethargically, and the sight that greeted them was far from a cheerful one. The room was dark; only the faintest light, emanating from the crack under the door across the room, gave any sense of dimension, but at first he couldn't make out any more than the borders of the chamber and a few dark blocky shapes on the ground. He was bound, he noted, in a standing position against a wall. His wrists and ankles were enclosed in metal, his arms pulled out to the sides in their immobile restraints, and the cuffs on his ankles seemed to pull downward, keeping his feet planted. There was also a metal ring around his neck, but nothing limited its movement. He could feel stone against his naked back and beneath his bare feet; he was clothed only in a pair of loose cloth pants.

Time passed and his eyes adjusted to the darkness further. He could now see that the dark blocky shapes on the floor were coffins, some opened, others closed. Looking to his left and right he could see the thick restraints around his arms bolted into the stone walls. He leaned forward and looked down to see that a length of chain ran between the cuffs on his ankles, which appeared to be just long enough to allow walking. There were also rings on either side of the cuffs that had been latched to a bolt sticking out of the floor.

The prisoner snarled at his predicament, or tried to, but no sound came out. A silence spell, he realized. He began to struggle against the restraints, but they didn't budge despite his inhuman strength; still, he didn't give up until he felt his flesh give way under the metal edges, and the copper scent of blood reached his sensitive nose.

Footsteps echoed in the corridor outside, stopping before a heavy wooden door. A key scraped in the lock, the latch released, and then there was the sound of the knob turning and the door squeaking open on slightly rusted hinges. Light momentarily blinded the captive, but his sight adjusted quickly as a single man entered the crypt and malice-filled peridot eyes met cold sapphire.

The captor strode forward and the captive struggled against the restraints again. The newcomer reached toward the collar with his left hand, and when his fingers touched it the captive immediately collapsed into unconsciousness.

He woke some time later, to find that the pain in his wrists from the struggles had abated, and a glance to one side confirmed that his wounds had been dressed. His captor stood in front of him, and the prisoner whispered the syllables of the other man's name.

_Cloud Strife._

The blonde didn't give any sign to indicate that he had understood, just turned and left the room shutting the door behind him. Sephiroth collapsed fully against his restraints; dirty, tangled silver hair falling across his face like a curtain.


	2. Chapter 1

A Matter of Control

A Matter of Control

Chapter 1

In the dark, silent room, time was stagnant. Sephiroth stared at the unchanging view without seeing, unsure how many hours or days or weeks had passed since his captor had left, or even if he was awake.

At one point he had dreamed. He was still sealed in the Mako cocoon and Mother caressed his mind fondly, speaking to him of godhood. Her "voice" changed at some point, surrounding him with warm totality, an almost-real sound that some dissociated part of his mind instinctively recognized as a lullaby.

Suddenly finding himself once more in the darkness of the crypt, the absence of Mother's touch in his mind had been an intense, almost physical pain. He had screamed then, long and hard, but his voice did not reach even his own ears.

When Cloud returned, an immeasurable time later, Sephiroth glared at him with magnified hatred; _this_ was the one who was responsible for Mother's death.

Cloud Strife was the one who had taken away the only being who had ever loved him.

Sephiroth tried to attack Cloud's mind through the link the Jenova cells had allowed him to forge with the younger man long ago; he hit a wall of resistance and set about to batter it down, as he had every other time. Cloud continued walking across the room as if he hadn't even noticed the assault. He stopped in front of Sephiroth and, lightning-fast, the blond's right hand grabbed and smashed the former general's head back against the wall, leaving his captive dazed with pain as he turned away. Even as he'd attacked Sephiroth, Cloud's expression had never changed.

Cloud sat on one of the closed coffins, laying the plate he was carrying in his lap; he picked up one of the two sandwiches on it and ate slowly, not sparing a glance at his captive as he did so. He finished the first sandwich and picked the second up, set the plate aside, walked over to Sephiroth, and held the sandwich close enough that the man could easily take a bite of it. Sephiroth just glared murderously at his captor. After about a full minute Cloud turned away, retrieved the plate, and walked back out of the crypt.

Time crawled by and slowly the pain in Sephiroth's head abated.

Cloud returned twice more, each after a long absence that could well have been an entire day, before Sephiroth gave in and grudgingly ate from his captor's hand, though he tried to bite Cloud's fingers any time they came close enough to his mouth in an act of stubborn spite so petty that it would have made him cringe to even consider it under any other circumstances.

It was humiliating, and made even more galling by Strife's complete lack of emotion. At the very least the man should have displayed some kind of satisfaction at having utterly defeated his nemesis, some indication that his actions were motivated by the simple desire for revenge or superiority; _that_, Sephiroth could have understood and ultimately defeated.

Sephiroth awoke at the sound of the door opening and closing, and glared as Cloud strode across the room. The glare turned to ill-concealed surprise when the blond knelt and started to unlock the rings that kept Sephiroth's feet flat to the floor.

The instant Cloud released the second ring Sephiroth aimed a crushing kick at the blond head, but his captor caught the ankle easily, without even flinching, and smashed it back against the wall. Sephiroth's heel connected with the stone with force that would have shattered bone had he been human.

Cloud stood smoothly and unlocked the cuff around Sephiroth's right wrist, grabbing it and repeating what he had done with the white-haired man's foot when Sephiroth made a grab for the younger man's throat. When Cloud unfastened the left wrist, Sephiroth just let it drop.

The blonde hooked two fingers of his left hand, which Sephiroth now noticed was covered in a silver glove, around Sephiroth's collar and pulled him away from the wall. Sephiroth's body felt weighted, slow and clumsy, and he realized that spells had been cast on him at some point; ones he would have been immune to if Mother had still been alive.

Cloud continued to drag Sephiroth out of the room by his collar.

Sephiroth realized where they were the moment they stepped out of the crypt: the basement of the Shin-Ra mansion in Nibelheim. Cloud tugged him toward the stairs and Sephiroth took the opportunity to try to attack the smaller man from behind, but the spells had slowed and weakened him greatly and in the blink of an eye Cloud had him up against the wall by the throat with one hand while the other delivered a sharp blow to the white-haired man's solar plexus. Not giving the former general time to recover his breath, the blond dragged him up the stairs.

Cloud led Sephiroth into a bathroom and then let go of the collar, shut the door behind them, and leaned against it nonchalantly, crossing his arms over his chest. The expectation was obvious, and Sephiroth was even more irritated by the accuracy with which Strife had anticipated his needs. Sephiroth's eyes widened as the implication sank in and then he glared at Cloud, who met his eyes evenly, without even a hint of smugness. The bastard had somehow managed to take control of their psychic link!

Sephiroth once again tried to attack Cloud's mind and he barely registered the counter attack before he was on his knees on the bathroom floor, clutching his head in agony. The taste of blood was in his mouth and the white-haired man pressed the fingers of one hand under his nose; they came away crimson.

Cloud had not moved from the door, his posture had not changed; even his expression was the same. The attack that had sent Sephiroth to his knees had been entirely psychic.

Glowering, Sephiroth wiped the blood away and got back to his feet. Cloud continued to regard him inscrutably; his face may as well have been carved from marble for all that it changed expression. Sephiroth imagined Cloud's face shattering from a blow of the general's fist as though it _were_ in fact a mask of stone, blood pouring out between the cracks. The image pleased him and he momentarily considered sharing it with his captor, but decided that would be even pettier than trying to bite the little bastard's fingers had been.

Sephiroth looked away from his jailer as he relieved himself. After he'd finished he cast a look at the bathtub, he was grimy and that state stung his pride, but Cloud immediately seized his collar and dragged him back out of the bathroom.

As they reached the stairs to the basement Sephiroth once again tried to attack Cloud from behind; this time he succeeded in landing a blow that pushed the blond down the hole in the center of the spiral staircase. Before Cloud had even hit the ground below, Sephiroth was out of the room at a full run, but he didn't even reach the intersecting hallway before he was tackled to the ground. His face connected with the floor and hands grabbed his wrists as a knee pressed down firmly on his spine between his shoulder blades. After a moment one hand released the wrist it was holding, but before Sephiroth could take advantage of the fact he felt light pressure on the back his collar and the world went dark.

When he awoke, Sephiroth found himself chained to the wall once more; Cloud was nowhere in sight.

Sephiroth's nose ached from his forehead and around his eyes and inside ears all the way down to his top front teeth, as if every bone had shifted just slightly out of position. He couldn't breathe through it because of the combination of swelling and crusted blood, but he was fairly sure it wasn't broken; he'd broken his nose once before in training many years ago and this wasn't quite as bad. He certainly had a concussion by now though.

If Mother were still alive these injuries would be nothing; she would direct her cells to repair him in no time; she would make him immune to the spells that held him and give him all the strength he needed to tear out of these restraints and this room and then he'd find that fucking puppet and snap his neck like kindling.

That silver glove was the main problem, Sephiroth now understood. Somehow it was what Strife was using to activate spells without needing time to charge the Materia; though where the Materia were located was still unknown since there didn't appear to be any attached to the glove itself. The collar perhaps? Yes, probably. They were certainly located on him; and thinking of it, he could feel a subtle but steady drain on his MP; not enough to ever deplete it under the current circumstances, but enough that he noticed now that he was paying attention. He would have to verify it as soon as the opportunity presented itself.

Another issue was Strife's newfound psychic capability. Sephiroth had been able to control the youth through the Jenova cells that Hojo had injected into him, and the link was still there, even though Mother's consciousness was dead and her remaining cells were inactive. Strife had learned to use that link to read Sephiroth, and could attack him through it.

A fragment surfaced from the fracture in Sephiroth's memory: an endless black field where only he and his nemesis existed; unable to react in the face of resolute sapphire eyes as the blows rained down, shattering his astral self and the hold he held over the younger man.

So, Cloud's dominance of the link was not quite as new as he'd originally thought.

The next time Cloud came to take Sephiroth to the bathroom, the former general was grudgingly obedient. Once he had relieved himself, Sephiroth turned to his captor, expecting to be led away. The blond didn't move.

After a minute, Sephiroth slowly turned to the bathtub and reached for the handle; he started to glance back at his jailer, then cursed himself for his own uncertainty and gave the knob a sharp twist. The silver-haired man adjusted the water so that it was somewhat hotter than he normally liked it, to scald away the dirty feeling that went far beneath his skin, and pulled the tab to redirect the water to the showerhead.

Now he looked back. Cloud still hadn't moved from his position or changed expression.

Sephiroth shucked off the cloth pants and stepped under the spray, refusing to sigh or in any other way show his relief and pleasure. There was no curtain; the showerhead had been angled toward the tile wall to prevent more than a very fine mist from hitting the floor, so Sephiroth adjusted the head, both so that he'd get a better spray himself and so that the floor would most undoubtedly be soaked before he was done. He paused for a moment as the thought came to him that maybe Strife would cancel his showering privileges for that. But Cloud didn't react and Sephiroth felt relief wash over him, followed immediately by disgust at his own relief.

The fact that something as basic as washing himself had been made into a reward for good behavior revolted the former general, even more because he couldn't deny that finally being allowed to shower after Mother-knows-how-long felt like nothing short of absolute heaven. If he wanted to be clean, he would have to obey...

He added this indignity to his mental list of reasons to make his captor's inevitable messy and painful execution last as long as possible.

As he washed himself he made a point of running his fingers over the collar, confirming the presence of Materia-sized bulges; he was not able to so much as touch their power, however, not that he had really expected to.

He would bide his time. Eventually, Strife would slip up and present him with an opportunity.

A/N: Chapter 2 may be a while coming; I've only written one page of it so far.


	3. Chapter 2

A/N: At long last, another chapter. Shorter than I like though… and I have a distinct impression that this chapter will eventually need to be rewritten. There's a lot of important information in it, so when I get further along there's a very real possibility that the story will start to develop a bit differently from the ideas I have now, and that means going back to adjust the information (or even removing some of it, if I decide that I revealed some things a little sooner than I should have). Just forewarning you.

* * *

**A Matter of Control**

**Chapter 2**

* * *

3 Months Ago

Cloud slumped; his forearms braced against the rock face the only thing keeping him from falling forward as he tried to regain his calm. The icy, white puffs of breath came too quick and shallow, and his trembling was only partly due to the cold temperature and his chilled sweat. He was panicking.

He dug his fingers into the rock as his knees started to give out under him, as if hoping the pain of splintering nails and abraded flesh would pull him back together again. His left knee hit the ground and he dropped his right hand to join it there. Slowly, he turned himself and sat with his back to the cliff and stared across the ground of the ravine to the prone figure a few yards away.

Sephiroth, alive and in his human form once more – unconscious, unresponsive to Cloud's presence, but unmistakably alive.

The Lifestream-saturated air shrieked around him, raking at him with claws of green-tinted mist, pulling at his mind in a mesmeric frenzy. His consciousness slipped, briefly spinning away with the wind only to slam back into him with enough force to jolt him physically; a flash of vague motion sickness followed like an echo, only to be swallowed by intense despair.

All the pain, all the trials and heartache, all the inconceivable effort it had taken to shore up his fragile emotional and psychological strength so that he would not shatter beneath the Mako-tainted gaze of the creature that invaded both his darkest nightmares and guiltiest fantasies—so that he could face that self-styled god and finally end him—all for nothing. Cloud had rent Sephiroth's soul asunder and sent the fragments hurtling into the Lifestream only to have the Lifestream choke on the intense hatred, nihilism, and sheer force of will and vomit him back out like a piece of bad meat.

What next? What could possibly be done?

_How did I even know to come here?_

With a feeling of sinking dread, Cloud turned inward, groping around for the place in his mind where Sephiroth had once invaded and manipulated his will. The void there stood empty, silent to Cloud's scrutiny, and Cloud tentatively reached for the link itself; a horrendous, twisted thing formed of the aberrant cells that infected both of the warriors' bodies; a gaping hole that would have given Sephiroth an avenue to take over Cloud's body when Sephiroth's own had been destroyed, had Cloud not still retained the strength to defeat him there as well. Cloud probed down through the link, slipping into Sephiroth's mind with discomforting ease, his own mind sparking with hypersensitivity, expecting ambush at any moment.

All was still.

The space was warped—twisted, jagged thorns erupting from all directions—and seemingly abandoned. Cloud knew that the vacant appearance was false, however; Sephiroth was here, somewhere. He pressed forward, down paths of thorny, branching protrusions that closed around him like a nightmare labyrinth garden. Cloud ducked low-hanging tendrils so utterly still they seemed to be petrified. _This_ was Sephiroth's mind? This place devoid of motion…of breath…of _will_?

The corridor ended so abruptly it seemed almost as if the walls had dematerialized. A dark chasm stretched ahead; a black void both up and down and as far into the distance as Cloud could see, but for the stars that twinkled within it. Cloud did not hesitate before the abyss, but stepped out into it and continued forward, no longer walking, but drifting forward as if in zero gravity, yet able to catch the air with his foot to propel himself. It was as easy to traverse as his own void.

A single star, larger than the others, caught his eye, and he started toward it. He passed silver shards, chunks of leathery black that were barely visible against the abyss, and snaking silver threads. Finally he reached the single shining point, and flinched when he saw what it was: A rendering of a head, cast in silver, molded in Sephiroth's image. Some of the fine silver strands still clung to the skull, and only one peridot eye looked back, the right eye was missing, along with a large chunk of that side of the face, the rest was etched in the expression of disbelief that had replayed in Cloud's dreams so many times. Unthinking, Cloud reached out toward that face, but as he did so, the strands of hair snaked around his hand, and with the touch came a flicker of awareness—Sephiroth's.

Cloud flung himself away from that contact, away from the remains of Sephiroth's consciousness, away from the fossilized tangle of the self-styled God's mind. He slammed back into his own self with a force that left him gasping, and discovered that his body had moved of its own accord from the wall he had left it leaning against. It now crouched beside Sephiroth, one hand stretched out, only an inch from touching that flawless face.

He pulled his hand back as if burned, overbalancing and falling into a seated position. Cloud looked at his fingers, rubbed them together, and then dropped his hand to rest on his leg. Sephiroth's consciousness remained, but it was shattered. He had not been the one to draw Cloud back to the Northern Crater; but although the compulsion had not been by _his_ influence, there were few alternative explanations—only one, really.

"What do you expect me to do?!" Cloud shouted into raging wind, his voice breaking with frustration. "If _you _couldn't deal with him, what makes you think ­_I_ can!?"

There was no comprehensible answer. Of course not—Cloud was not Aeris; he couldn't just hold a conversation with the planet. Still, he could feel a rising sense of expectation in the air that rushed past him; the same subconscious urging that had brought him here in the first place.

* * *

Present

The concealed door to the basement slid shut with a click. Cloud turned and leaned back against the wall, his posture slumping as the impassive mask bled away. He let his head fall back to rest on the stones and a sigh that verged on a moan escaped him. The term "nerve-wracking" fell far short of describing his current situation.

Cloud pushed himself away from the wall and walked the few steps to the nearest bed with a feeling of being dragged. He dropped onto it and buried his face in the pillow. Sephiroth's malice seemed burned into his skin; the fathomless hate and rage that consumed the Scion of Jenova seemed impossible to conquer, yet that was exactly what the planet expected Cloud to do. Sephiroth was a creature who had only ever moved under someone else's direction – Hojo, Shin-Ra, Jenova – all his life, someone had held the leash; now it was Cloud's turn. The planet hoped that Sephiroth would prove controllable once someone established sufficient dominance over him; Cloud wasn't so sure, but there wasn't time to find another avenue. The threat Sephiroth presented needed to be neutralized before he regained his full strength, and, more importantly, before he figured out that he could control the Jenova cells inside himself, as Cloud had been learning to do.

Cloud's PHS rang on the nightstand. He looked at the number more out of habit than anything. Tifa. Of course. He'd have to call her at some point. Make up another lie to explain why he couldn't come see her; why he so seldom called her back. Think of a location that she wouldn't want to visit. Saying he was traveling wouldn't work forever; saying he was in Nibelheim would only worry her and bring her more quickly. If he kept brushing her off, though, she'd eventually suspect his location; she had good intuition, if nothing else.

He'd call her later.

He knew he should call Vincent too. The gunner had a right to know; and he could help, that much was certain. But bringing him in would mean forcing him to confront memories that he'd probably rather forget. The notes Cloud had read clearly indicated that the restraints in the crypt, along with the collar and glove, had originally been designed to contain Vincent in the most difficult stages of Hojo's experimentation.

This call too, Cloud decided to put off.


	4. Chapter 3

A/N: Yes, an actual chapter finally! I have had most of this chapter for a while, but I was stuck in indecision over whether I wanted to use this sequence of events first or another one that I had started writing, and then there was a third scene that I wasn't sure whether I wanted to incorporate yet or not. I went with not, even though the result was a much shorter chapter than I'd like - but on the other hand, that means I have most of chapter 5, so it should come out pretty quickly after I write chapter 4 - no promises on when _that_ will be done though.

* * *

**A Matter of Control**

**Chapter 3**

* * *

It sickened Sephiroth. The effort it took to move; the leaden weight of his body; the slight grogginess that made it hard to focus. The Materia were partly to blame, but there was also the lack of all the gifts Mother had given him. That he was so weak without her support… surely there had to be something more than that.

Surely his strength hadn't come from Mother alone.

The collar had eight bulges; Seal and Time were certainly in use, possibly Mystify as well, and assuming that Cloud had all of the known types of Materia it also would be logical to assume that there was a Manipulate, though if there was, why wasn't Cloud using it? And the other four? His MP was being drained, but that could be an independent function of the collar; Cloud could certainly sense his condition, but that could be because of the telepathic link.

There had been a department experimenting with Materia when Sephrioth still served Shin-Ra, so perhaps there were other Materia types he didn't know about. It could even be possible that all of the effects he was currently under were coming from a single hybrid Materia. He couldn't make any assumptions. There were no conclusions to be drawn about what could potentially result from those gloved fingers making contact with the collar. In order to defeat Cloud, the first thing Sephiroth would have to do is rip off that damned gloved arm.

It had been about three weeks, Sephiroth figured. Three weeks of playing obedient pet for the blond upstart; eating from his hand, bathing and relieving himself at his captor's leisure. He was tired of having his life restricted to the crypt, the bathroom, and the path between the two, his passage dictated by a firm tug on his imprisoning collar. That was why Sephiroth could forgive himself for the feeling of overwhelming relief when Cloud led him past the bathroom door.

The room was at the back of the house, windows looking down into the mansion's grounds – a small garden with a few flowers poking out between the weeds and a few fruit trees that hadn't been pruned in over a decade, and then beyond that an overgrown field. The direction of the shadows and quality of the light indicated that it was early afternoon.

A chair was turned toward the windows and that was where Cloud led his captive. Sephiroth sat without hesitation. He started to glace around the room, but the cold, firm touch of the glove on the side of his face prevented him. Irritated, Sephiroth tried to bat the hand away; it immediately went instead to the collar, and Sephiroth felt, for the first time in his life, the heavy blanket of a Stop spell wash over him. Cloud redirected his head so that he was looking directly out the window, then went to the bookshelf, just barely within Sephiroth's peripheral vision, took out a book, and then disappeared into the space behind the paralyzed man. Sephiroth heard what he assumed was Cloud sitting down in the other chair, then only the occasional sound of a page turning.

Outside the window, Sephiroth saw a group of children kicking around a red ball as well as they could in the wild grass. After the still surroundings that had been all he'd seen for the last three weeks, the change was refreshing enough that trying to discern the rules of the game the brats were playing was almost interesting, and it wasn't as if he was being allowed to look anywhere else.

After several minutes it seemed apparent to Sephiroth that there _were_ no rules. There were no teams that he could see, it was just a matter of the kid with the ball trying to kick it to whomever he'd chosen to kick it to and others attempting to intercept it as the mood struck them, and yet others attempting to block those people should they feel the urge to. Someone who had once stolen the ball from one kid, could end up trying to kick to that very same kid later in the game, or blocking someone who had earlier kicked to him. Faint laughter reached him.

Nonsense.

"_You are above such inconsequential pastimes."_

Sephiroth shut his eyes. Shut out the playing children. Shut out the childhood always on the other side of the glass. Shut out the oily voice that clung to the sharp edges of his memory. In his stopped state, the stillness of his body was comfortable despite the rigidity of his posture; with the time around him stopped, his muscles never ached, as if he had only just sat down.

In that strange, heavy comfort, Sephiroth slept.

* * *

His eyes snapped open, darting around. He was no longer in the chair in Hojo's office, but neither was he in the crypt. He was lying on the bed in the room with the secret passage; not just lying, but covered by the blankets. After the weeks of sleeping in those restraints, even the old, lumpy mattress seemed luxuriant.

The window was in front of him, the sky outside darkening, he had been sleeping for hours. He tried to move his hand, to slide it up along the sheet a little; it obeyed, albeit sluggishly. Cloud was not within his range of sight.

Logically, he knew that little bastard was behind him, watching with that damned emotionless mask of his, and had sensed the moment Sephiroth had awakened; even so, the urge to try to escape was overwhelming, despite the desire to take advantage of being in a bed to rest longer – he was so exhausted. Maybe Strife had fallen asleep, or was otherwise not paying attention. Maybe he'd gotten cocky; had left his captive alone with the assumption he'd been too well-trained by now to try to escape if he wasn't sure Cloud was watching. The only way to know for sure was to either try to break through the window and run, or turn around and look. If he looked and Cloud was there, he would probably lose any element of surprise that could have bought him some time.

_Ridiculous. Strife is faster and stronger; it wouldn't matter if I got even a five second head-start. _

He hated admitting that – _Hated_ it. A shard of self-loathing lanced through him; the festering awareness of his own pathetic state that grew every time he was obedient.

He turned around. As he thought, Cloud was sitting in the chair by the bed, one leg tucked up and his chin resting on the forearms crossed over his knee. His eyes were fixed on Sephiroth.

Sephiroth was trapped for a moment between defiance and acquiescence; his expression neutral. Exhaustion eventually won out; Sephiroth closed his eyes again and drifted off to sleep, never doubting that he'd awaken back in his restraints.


End file.
